Denver’s council on Monday will decide whether a tax subsidy that 20 years ago helped redevelop a blighted marketplace on Broadway should be redirected to fix drainage and realign the streets in the area.

At least one councilwoman believes that would be a misuse of the tax-increment financing subsidy that was intended to divert tax revenues to fix the blight problem, not future storm-water and street issues.

“It is hijacking a project,” said Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz, the lone Republican on the 13-member council, who says she will vote “no” at the meeting. “It is a misuse of the urban renewal authority’s purpose, tacking this project on at the end.”

City officials and Council President Chris Nevitt see a golden opportunity to use five years still available on the 25-year subsidy and tie into a Colorado Department of Transportation storm-water project and also get funding from a newly created metropolitan district.

“We have an opportunity to dramatically increase the power of our small investment,” Nevitt said. “We are taking a few dollars of ours and synergizing them with a project CDOT is doing and considerable investment on the part of the property owner, and we are piggybacking on those energies for a storm-water project that will dramatically fix a storm-water problem that is renowned.”

In 1992, a $40 million project was announced to redevelop the blighted 40-acre site at South Broadway and Alameda Avenue. The plan called for demolishing an abandoned Montgomery Ward department store.

The city contributed $11.6 million to the new Broadway Marketplace project by issuing tax-increment revenue bonds that would be paid off over 25 years, or by 2017.

The area is now home to Kmart, Sam’s Club, an Albertsons and other shops. The project has been a retail success. The debt was paid off in June.

Now, city officials want to use the remaining five years on the agreement to extend tax-increment financing for a storm-water outflow project to connect to a new CDOT culvert near Interstate 25 and to align Dakota Street for a better connection with the Alameda light-rail station.

The proposed development would start this year and be completed by 2017.

The council last spring approved $1 million to support planning and engineering from the wastewater enterprise fund that will be repaid through tax-increment financing.

Monday’s vote would approve an additional $12 million in city funds that would also be paid off through tax-increment financing. It would not divert sales tax revenue.

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

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